This invention relates to an outer rearsight mirror for vehicles being settable in position by distant electrical control and including a rearwardly opened housing carried by a footing support, in which housing a driving aggregate is built-in controlled by means of cables and a switch at a distance from the interior of the vehicle, whereto a mirror glass carrier is articulately associated that is settable about the horizontal axis upwardly and downwardly and about the vertical axis inwardly and outwardly.
Generally stated, the known distantly operable outer rearsight mirrors are provided with an electrical driving aggregate in the form of a pole-reversible motor, with a transmission forward and rearward run gearing, and with a pulling magnet carrying out the run change by axially shifting the motor pinion. The motor, gearing, magnet and cable connections are closed within a casing made of a plastic material, composed of a pair of half-shells with circumscribing flanges unitary with this casing. This unit lies on a plurality of threaded eyelets projecting from the bottom of a hollow cast or injection molded casing for the mirror upon which eyelets this unit is attached by means of screws that are tightened by screw-drivers introducible into the housing opening. From the half-shells facing the housing opening, there centrally extends a support as a bearing for a universal joint. Upon this joint, a generally rectangular frame is pivotally located having mutually crossing spokes and being limitedly swingable about the horizontal axis and about the vertical axis crossing the same. This swinging is effected by pulling elements, such as for instance cords or long screws projecting from the same half-shell and operating on plural points lying outside the crossing on the axes thereof and accomplishing the shifts of the frame to the momentaneously selected one of the four possible directions. In the course of the finishing mounting of the entire rearsight mirror, by means of the so-called "blind rivets", there is affixed to this frame from the outer side inseparably an additional thin plate and to this plate the mirrorglass is then attached by means of a plastic foil self-sticking on either side thereof and serving at the same time as a protection against splintering.
These known distantly actuable outer rearsight mirrors have shown to suffer from a considerable shortcoming, bothersome for a rational assemblage in a factory. This shortcoming lies in the circumstance that first the entire electrical driving aggregate, together with the frame it carries, ought to be affixed by screws from outside to the threaded eyelets projecting from the housing inner side. This operation must be preceded by application to this frame of said additional thin plate by means of blind rivets and by glueing onto this plate of the mirror glass.
This shortcoming of the known rearsight mirrors engenders another important drawback. After the plate has been riveted to the frame and in particular after the mirror glass has been glued to this plate, neither the electrical driving aggregate nor the fixing screws tying this aggregate to the housing are accessible from outside. Thus, for checking-up, repairing or exchanging in case of a defect the aggregate, the still good mirror glass must be stripped from the plate carrying it. This is connected with the absolute danger of its breaking. Then there are to be drilled out the connecting blind rivets fixing this plate to the swingable frame. All this means that, when in the case of the known mirrors one defect is to be remedied, this can be effected only with a considerable and purposeless time loss. This is thereby connected with costs and with the peril of damaging or even destructing the valuable mirror parts.
Yet, there is another inconvenience prejudicially affecting the known distantly operable outer rearsight mirrors, namely that they are not universally employable for both the left and the right side of the vehicle. The angle at which the mirror glass may be turned inside its housing in the four different directions is relatively small. Therefore, this housing, together with the footing support carrying the same, and/or this footing support itself, must be attached to the vehicle body in a manner such that this housing, in its normal and/or zero position, is turned at a correspondingly great initial angle inwardly in the direction toward the side window.
As a consequence hereof, the known outer rearsight mirrors require the manufacturing plant to spend a lot of money on instruments and on double warehousing, while wholesale enterprises have to store one specific mirror type or at least one by one specific housing or footing support for the left and the right side of the vehicle.